Sometimes only the finest of lines divides genius from madness. It?s near that boundary that James Glickenhaus seems to have lived most of his life. His latest idea?as explained to Car and Driver on the company?s stand at the Geneva auto show?is a classic example. He wants to run a no-holds-barred competition at the Nürburgring to finally establish just which street-legal car is fastest around the ever-hyped Nordschleife circuit.
There is an ulterior motive. Glickenhaus is convinced this will prove that his own car, the roadgoing SCG 003S, will prove to be the quickest, on the not unreasonable grounds that it is closely based on the SCG 003C race car that has already proved itself in multiple endurance races at the ?Ring. (Glickenhaus is the enthusiast who took the Ferrari P4/5 by Pininfarina and evolved it into a racer, and he has since diversified into what is basically his own car company: Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus.) His proposition is compellingly simple?and compellingly mad at the same time: ?What I am proposing to do is to endow the Glickenhaus Road Cup, which will be run at the Nürburgring 24 hours [event] after the race cars qualify. Here are the rules: an individual has to own the car, so there?s no bullshit, and it has to be road registered and legal. You start at Cologne and then drive to Nürburg on the same set of tires you will set a time on?they have to be real road tires, not those special tires that get dropped off in a safe. They have to be tires...